Sourcing directly from farmers can have both benefits and challenges for manufacturers. So what tips the scales? What are the advantages that outweigh the challenges, and how can you, as a farmer, use this to your advantage? Here we address six categories of benefits: communication, interdependence, marketing advantages, transparency, value alignment, and simple economics.

Beyond Fresh and Direct fact sheets are part of a project exploring the opportunities and challenges small and medium-size farms encounter when they seek to enter the rapidly-growing specialty food marketplace as either ingredient suppliers or manufacturers themselves. The project included:

A survey of specialty food manufacturers in California, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin in 2015, and

Current funding support provided by United States Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) through the Multistate project, NC-1198, “Renewing an Agriculture of the Middle: Value Chain Design, Policy Approaches, and Environmental and Social Impacts” (2012 -2017).